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Friday 5 September 2008

A subject in need of a writer

Allan Massie celebrates Ouida

‘Have you your next book in mind?’ ‘Not yet, I can’t fix on a subject,’ my friend replied. ‘What about Ouida?’ I said. Actually this exchange has taken place a couple of times, and on each occasion my suggestion was received without enthusiasm. Perhaps it was thought patronising: Victorian romantic novelist, suitable subject for a clever young modern woman. But it was not intended as such, for Ouida was a remarkable woman and a remarkable writer, and I would dearly love to read a good new biography of her.

She is, I suppose, largely forgotten, and I doubt if anything she wrote is in print, though you can pick well-worn copies of her books up cheaply in second-hand bookshops. She was born in Suffolk in 1839 to an English mother and French father. Her real name was Louise de la Ramée, and Ouida is a childish corruption of it. Her first novels were high-coloured romances, excellent of their sort. The most famous, Under Two Flags, has a delightful, resourceful heroine, irresistibly named ‘Cigarette’. They made her rich, a society figure, who held court at the old Langham Hotel to noblemen and guards officers. She hated militarism but loved a military man, and preferred male to female company, once remarking that disease was better than war because it killed more women than men, an unfashionable view even in her time. She became a mildly scandalous figure.

Of course these novels are dated. They were dated even when Norman Douglas wrote about her in Alone: ‘Those guardsmen who drenched their beards in scent and breakfasted off caviare and chocolate and sparkling Moselle — they certainly seem fantastic. They really were fantastic. They did drench their beards in scent…’

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